The Liberal Patriot

Privacy, Executive Privilege and Green Plaid Pants

L.B. Madison - August 9, 2005

Some Americans who ought to know better persist in telling us there is no mention of a privacy right in our Constitution. It is true the word "privacy" does not occur in the text of the Constitution, but then neither does the phrase "executive privilege," and yet we regularly hear presidents claiming an "executive privilege" to keep documents and meetings secret from the American public.

There is also no mention in the Constitution of a right to wear green plaid pants; yet I would assure you there is no court in the land that would deny you have a right to wear green plaid pants.

And there is a reason for that; it's in the Bill of Rights, in the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Yes, "...other [right]s retained by the people" -- that's the key.

You see, when the Founders were designing our government, there were some who felt the Constitution, as proposed, needed a Bill of Rights (which many states already had in their constitutions); others feared that if they enumerated certain rights, some people might conclude that only the listed rights would be safe from an overreaching government. The Founding Fathers believed everyone was born with certain "natural" and unalienable rights that no government should ever be permitted to take away. Simply by being born, people had those rights forever and unto their descendants.

Eventually, with pressure from states that were reluctant to ratify the national Constitution unless it included a Bill of Rights, the Founders enumerated specific rights in the first ten amendments. But to make sure no one would ever think the people's rights were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution and its amendments, they wrote the Ninth Amendment, which clearly spells out that unless, in the Constitution, the people have surrendered certain rights to the government, they retain all the "natural" and unalienable" rights they were born with, including the right to privacy.

On the other hand, the Constitution declares that the government has no rights other than those enumerated in the Constitution. Proof of that is in the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Reserved "to the people." All power comes from The People.

You have a right to privacy and to wear green plaid pants, but the president has no Constitutional right to "executive" privilege." That is a "privilege" that has been asserted by presidents, from time to time, and denied or affirmed from one time to another by different judges who interpret the Constitution but cannot quote from the Constitution when they affirm "executive privilege," because the privilege does not exist in the Constitution.

In America, the people are sovereign; that means the power resides with the people, and the government has only those powers and rights The People give to the government, and none more than that.

All rights not given to the government in our Constitution remain OUR rights.

We the People. Remember?

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